‘Are you right there,
Michael? are you right?
Have you got the parcel there for Mrs. White?’
He felt, and his companions sympathized, that he was entering into the spirit of Irish life. Then, heralded by an obsequious guard, came a great man, proconsular in mien and gait. Bags and rugs were wheeled beside him. In his hand was a despatch-box bearing the tremendous initials of the Local Government Board. He took complete possession of a first-class smoking carriage, scribbled a telegram, perhaps of international importance, handed it to the guard for instant despatch, and lit a finely-odorous cigar. Hyacinth, humbled by the mere view of this incarnation of the Imperial spirit, went meekly to the waiting-room to fetch Marion and his child. He led them across the now crowded platform towards a third-class carriage.
‘I will not go with you in your first-class carriage, Father Lavelle; so that’s flat. Nor I won’t split the difference and go second either, if that’s what you’re going to propose to me. Is it spend what would keep the family of a poor man in bread and tea for a week, for the sake of easing my back with a cushion? Get away with you. The plain deal board’s good enough for me. And, moreover, I doubt very much if I’ve the money to do it, if I were ever so willing. I’m afraid to look into my purse to count the few coppers that’s left in it after paying that murdering bill in the hotel you took me to. Gresham, indeed! A place where they’re not ashamed to charge a poor old priest three and sixpence for his breakfast, and me not able to eat the half of what they put before me.’
Hyacinth turned quickly. Two priests stood together near the bookstall. The one, a young man, handsome and well-dressed, he did not know. The other he recognised at once. It seemed to be the same familiarly shabby black coat which he wore, the same many-stained waistcoat, the identical silk hat, ruffled and rain-spotted. The same pads of flesh hung flaccid from his jaws; the red, cracked knuckles of his hands, well remembered, were enormous still. Only the furrows on the face seemed to be ploughed deeper and wider, and a few more stiff hairs curled over the general bushiness of the grizzled eyebrows.
‘Father Moran!’ cried Hyacinth.
‘I am Father Moran. You’re right there. But who you are or how you come to know me is more than I can tell. But wait a minute. I’ve a sort of recollection of your voice. Will you speak to me again, and maybe I’ll be able to put a name on you.’
Hyacinth said a few words rapidly in Irish.
‘I have you now,’ said the priest. ‘You’re Hyacinth Conneally, the boy that went out to fight for the Boers. Father Lavelle, this is a friend of mine that I’ve known ever since he was born, and I haven’t laid eyes on him these six years or more. You’re going West, Mr. Conneally? But of course you are. Where else would you be going? We’ll travel together and talk. If it’s second-class you’re going, Father Lavelle will have to lend me the money to pay the extra on my ticket, so as I can go with you. Seemingly it’s a Protestant minister you’ve grown into. Well now, who’d have thought it? And you so set on fighting the battle of Armageddon and all. It’s a come-down for you, so it is. But never mind. You might have got yourself killed in it. There’s many a one killed or maimed for life in smaller fights than it. It’s better to be a minister any day than a corpse or a cripple. And as you are a minister, it’s likely to be third-class you’re travelling. Times are changed since I was young. It was the priests travelled third-class then, if they travelled at all, and the ministers were cocked up on the cushions, looking down on the likes of us out of the windows with the little red curtains half-drawn across them. Now it’ll be Father Lavelle there, with his grand new coat that he says is Irish manufacture—but I don’t believe him—who’ll be doing the gentleman. But come along, Mr. Conneally—come along, and tell me all the battles you fought and the Generals you made prisoners of, and how it was you took to preaching afterwards.’
Hyacinth, somewhat shyly, introduced the priest to Marion. Then a ticket-collector drove them into their carriage and locked the door.
Father Moran began to catechize Hyacinth before the train started, and drew from him, as they went westwards, the story of his disappointments, doubts, hopes, veerings, and final despair. Hyacinth spoke unwillingly at first, giving no more than necessary answers to the questions. Then, because he found that reticence called down on him fresh and more detailed inquiries, and also because the priest’s evident and sympathetic interest redeemed a prying curiosity from offensiveness, he told his tale more freely. Very soon there was no more need of questioning, and Father Moran’s share in the talk took the form of comments interrupting a narrative.